


the only place i am and should be

by suitablyskippy



Category: The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Genre: Complicated Relationships, F/F, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 21:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21841459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: “Nell, do you hear it? Are you awake?”I am not awake, Eleanor told herself, I am asleep and I will stay asleep, for attention, because Theodora knows all about the things which people do in order to receive attention; I will lie here quietly and calmly and she may cry and be afraid alone tonight. “I am awake,” Eleanor said. “What do you hear?”(It seemed to Eleanor that it was not a symptom of disease to be precisely and unapologetically what one was: a house, or otherwise.)
Relationships: Theodora/Eleanor "Nell" Vance
Comments: 12
Kudos: 49
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	the only place i am and should be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shinealightonme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/gifts).



> Set during the events of the novel, with some very slight liberties taken with the timeline.

The night brought nothing to Hill House which did not dwell within it in the daylight hours. 

Against the door of the blue room, the frenetic drumroll sound of hammering continued; it continued each moment from the moment before as surely and strongly as though there had never been a moment from which it hadn’t continued; it was not a sound which had ever had to begin, because it was not a sound which had ever been silent or not existed. Even in the moment that its first strike tonight had jolted Eleanor suddenly and clearly from sleep into wakefulness, the sound had already had about it a sense of continuation; she had sat upright and breathless and listening, and felt that what she heard was not in itself new – rather it was _she_ who was new; she felt herself made newly aware. 

The sound swelled strongly and filled the room and became the room; the whole world seemed held tight by the din, wrapped and swaddled by it. Time could not move on for as long as the sound held it pinned. 

“Well, here we go again,” Theodora said nonsensically. The small squeaking noise of her bedsprings as she clambered out was nonsensical too, a silly little noise almost lost in the fierceness of the drumroll at their door. “On your marks, get set... Except, of course,” she went on, scrambling into Eleanor’s bed and moving in the blackness to find Eleanor herself, to press herself close and hot against Eleanor’s side, “there is nowhere for us _to_ go, here in Hill House. We are here and so is it. Oh – _Nell_ ,” clutching suddenly at Eleanor’s arm; the grip of her fingers was shockingly strong, “it _is_ here, isn’t it? I wish it weren’t. I wish _I_ weren’t. I wish either it or I were sunning ourselves on some pleasant far-off lakeside shore with each of us having not a thought in our minds of the other – having _never_ had any such thoughts; I wish we both were perfect strangers, Hill House and I. I wish—” 

“Do you hear?” Eleanor said, raising her head in the darkness. “Theo, hush – listen... Do you hear it?” 

Both of them were quiet. The sound was strange, because it didn’t seem that any sound so soft should be heard while the fury at their door still raged – but it was: they heard it. The sound of whispering moved in softly beneath the door of their connecting bathroom, and it rose up in light ticklish wisps from below their beds, and it soaked through the walls and seeped thickly into the furnishings of their room in the way that mildew might have done in a house which was kept less immaculately well than was Hill House. 

Moving playfully throughout was the sound of laughter: it was the joyful, giggling laughter of a child worn out from play, made exhausted by their own happiness; it twisted in a quick elusive way all through the chaos like a single strand of golden thread, woven in to catch the attention. 

Theodora turned her face against Eleanor’s shoulder. “Here it is,” she said despairingly, “here it is, here we go; it’s _here_...” 

Eleanor shushed her, and held her, and reached across her blindly in the darkness until the tips of her fingers touched the smooth cool surface of their bedside lamp; the light flooded warmly in a puddle across their beds. The pounding at the panels of their firm old door was becoming slower, almost languid, as though whatever was engaged in the task of causing the sound had a certain amount of time it must spend at that task but no particular guidelines as to what speed or force must be maintained; it was settling into a rhythm it found more comfortable, for the simple practical reason that it had plenty of time tonight still left to fill. 

“Why won’t it go away?” Theodora’s voice was muffled, and petulant with fear. “Oughtn’t it to have realized by now that none of us wants it here? We don’t want it _anywhere_ ; we want it here least of all – and yet it’s here, it’s _here_...” 

Of course it’s here, Eleanor said to herself, enjoying her own calm reason; it was as though she stood back separately and sensibly from herself and saw the contrast between Eleanor, composed, and Theodora, rubbing her face like a fearful child against Eleanor’s own shoulder; of course it’s here, she thought again, it’s Hill House – how could it _not_ be here? Here are its walls, strong and tall, and here are its doors, holding firm even now; here are its halls which close around us to keep within what must be within and keep without what must be without, and here are its rooms which hold what they must hold, and its stairs, which rise upwards in the proper way and finish where they ought; of _course_ it’s here, Eleanor said to herself again, satisfied and sensible. Of course it’s here, for where else would it be? 

“I don’t care; I wish it were _anywhere_ else,” Theodora said vehemently. “I hate it, I hate it. Burn it down and pour concrete across the wreckage.” 

“Oh, hush,” Eleanor said to her gently, looking down at the top of Theodora’s head; her hair was gleaming in a rich and lovely way where it was caught by the shining lamplight, and Eleanor’s heart was full of kindness and love and she was not afraid; she was luxuriating in the feeling of her own easy tenderness. “Hush, baby, don’t be afraid... It’s here, but so are we.” She touched Theodora’s hair, moving loose strands away from her hot face, soothing her; hoping to soothe her. “And doesn’t it seem – oh, that it only _wants_ us to know that it’s here?”

Theodora breathed hard and held her, and didn’t speak. 

“As if it only _wants_ us to know,” Eleanor said again. She was sitting up in her bed; she moved and Theodora moved too, pressing fast and urgently against her, as though she feared Eleanor could be lost so easily. “Oh, Theo, baby; hush, don’t be scared... It’s as if the house only wants us to acknowledge it. It’s here – well, it _is_ here; it’s all around us, we’re inside it, we _are_ it, almost, in a way, a part of it, of the – the inner workings, in a way. As if it only wants to be known by us. And it has a right to be known, really, when you think of what it is to us, and what we are to it now. We are scurrying around inside it; we are within it, we have made our homes within it. Don’t you think?”

“I think – what _I_ think is that I am quite terribly afraid,” Theodora said. She is trying to say it with bravado, Eleanor thought cleverly to herself, to make herself seem as though she cares less by how willing she is to admit how much she cares, but _I_ see through her; I shall touch her hair and be kind to her, because I can afford to be. I am rich tonight in the currency of kindness. “I know perfectly well that in only a handful of hours I shall be sitting down to another magnificent morning spread courtesy of, of—” 

At the door had come a strike even fiercer than the last, and Eleanor felt Theodora’s body flinch against her own; she spoke faster. 

“—of Mrs. Dudley, oh, this _house_!—and I won’t remember how it felt to be afraid. I shall remember that I _was_ afraid but not – not _this_ ; not the way it... oh, that it’s _inside_ you, that it becomes what you’re made of, that it – _takes you over_... I _am_ afraid,” Theodora said with passion. “And – afraid is what I _am_. I’m not anything else. I feel as though I’m hardly even Theo anymore, you know; I’m only afraid. There simply isn’t room in me for being anything else.”

“Poor baby,” Eleanor said tenderly, “poor Theo, you mustn’t be afraid. Hush, now,” she told Theodora again, and held her close and stroked her shining lovely hair as their door held strong and their lamp burned bright and Hill House, all around them, containing them, established that it was here and it was itself and it was not something to be unseen or unloved or turned away from. It was here and it was not anywhere else. 

+++

“Such a flair for the dramatic as this house possesses I have never seen,” Theodora said, speaking with dry amusement to the piece of kipper impaled on her fork; she regarded it a moment longer before she took it neatly into her mouth and swallowed, and put an end to it. “Really, when you think of the months of rehearsal any merely mortal company would need to have any hope of pulling off a performance as seamless as those which Hill House puts on for us each night with ease – well, you have to admire the old place, don’t you? Hill House spares no effort.”

“The audience sits breathless,” said Luke, “enraptured by the darkness of the curtains, expecting at any moment for them to sweep aside and let the show begin, and then – why, what’s _this_? Some enterprising stagehand has turned on the fans and a chill sweeps across the darkened house, and our stage is set; the curtains are drawn aside. _Now_ : let the show begin.”

“First act: meet the cast as the cast meet each other. Second act: noises in the night. Third act – well, the cast is yet to enter rehearsal; the program will be updated as and when we find out ourselves.”

“Why else does good Mrs. Dudley make sure to tell us so frequently that she leaves the premises at nine sharp? To relieve us of our suspicions, of course. If we went wandering behind the scenes after nine o’ clock then we would find her banging away at her saucepans, making sure all of Hill House’s effects happen just so.”

“I clear the table at ten. I howl to rouse you from your beds at midnight.” 

“I release wild animals into the halls at two o’ clock in the morning precisely.”

“I cage them again at three, and then I rush up and down the halls in my husband’s work-boots kicking at your bedroom doors until half past four—”

“—at which time I retire for a short nap before breakfast, which, as it is not impossible you may recall, is served, unfailingly, at nine.” 

“You may set your watch equally by my horrors or my meals,” said Theodora, and laughed because she was pretending; she was not really Mrs. Dudley, she was Theodora, and she laughed because all of them knew she was only pretending not to be. “Dear Nell and I were dreadfully scared last night, of course,” Theodora went on carelessly, tipping back her head as if to shake water from her hair in a movement which seemed graceful only because it was she who made it, and she was Theodora. “Like a pair of little mice when the cat comes prowling out to play.”

That isn’t true, Eleanor thought, shocked; she has made a mistake, that isn’t true at all. 

“Any mouse as nimble as our own dear Nell could outwit and outrace any cat as stuck-in-the-mud as the charming Mrs. Dudley,” Luke said, turning his smile toward Eleanor as he reached again for the pot of coffee; there was a knowing and friendly look in his eyes as he met hers, as though to say _you are one of us_ , and Eleanor saw it there and knew it was there on purpose; there would be no need to tell her she was one of them if she was truly one of them. “You could be the terror of her kitchen, Nell, if you only tried. No pantry would be safe from your frisky whiskers and scampering paws.” 

He is making fun of me, Eleanor said to herself clearly; he is mocking me, and Theodora is smiling because she is enjoying his mockery. Theodora likes to hear me mocked. And do you know, she thought, I do not believe Theodora _did_ make a mistake, when she spoke wrongly just now; Eleanor raised her head, and said to her: “ _You_ were afraid, Theo.” 

“I believe I just said precisely that,” Theodora said. “Didn’t I?” she asked the table. “ _Didn’t_ I?” she asked Luke directly, appealingly, turning her head to him as though he would know better than she or Eleanor what she had said, and felt, and how last night had been. 

“You said you would forget that you were afraid but you _were_ afraid. I wasn’t afraid.” You were afraid and I held you and you clung to me; I called you baby and you breathed fast and whimpered and held me, you held me, and I was kind to you and you held me... Eleanor forced herself into a desperate calm and spoke again, sick with the sudden and unbearable fear that she might not be believed or taken seriously by the group: “I’m only reminding you, Theo, because you said you knew you would forget. But you _were_ afraid.”

“Well, of course I was! Positively terrified,” said Theodora, speaking with such careless ease that at once it seemed anyone who cared more than she did cared far too much. “We were both afraid, weren’t we? Frightened out of our wits – now, _there’s_ a phrase I never knew the truth of before Hill House; I believe I’ve spent considerably fewer nights in my wits here than I have out of them. And we were both quite out of our wits last night, which is as usual, of course, here in this glorious paradise of a summer home. But it all seems so silly in the morning light, and thank God for that.”

“ _I_ wasn’t afraid,” Eleanor said. 

“There’s no shame in fear,” said the doctor, who was spreading butter laboriously across the full surface of a piece of toast. “Fear is a reflex of the body like any other; it protects us, by warning us of danger. Often it can be an overactive reflex, warning of danger when none exists, but such is the price we must pay for its otherwise remarkably valuable services.”

“I wasn’t afraid,” Eleanor said. “Theo knows that I wasn’t. I wasn’t.”

“Another delightful breakfast from Mrs. Dudley, our most multi-talented of stagehands,” Luke said, and sighed in kipper-breath satisfaction. “I believe we have a set of dominoes in the games room, unless of course Hill House has confiscated it from us overnight as punishment for our being insufficiently awed by its dramatics. Anyone for a round or two?” 

“Very little thrills me as profoundly as the prospect of dominoes,” said Theodora, “therefore you may count me in.”

“I _wasn’t_ afraid,” Eleanor said vehemently. 

+++

Alone, she went through the house and stopped sometimes to put her hand against its walls, which were smooth and stable; they did not move and did not shake and they were as walls should be, fulfilling their purpose and content to know they were doing so. Although Hill House existed in its customary gloom, it was the daytime; when Eleanor passed through windowed rooms in the outer ring she was able to see the daylight, which proved it – though the daylight, within Hill House, was always made strained by the immense effort required to penetrate the hostility of its forbidding exterior, and so what little daylight ever struggled into Hill House never shone as brightly as it would have shone elsewhere: its potential for brightness was removed as its price of entry. 

There was no dust and no sound and no movement. In the great dark stillness of the house it began to seem that perhaps last night’s relentless crescendo of sound had never been silenced: Eleanor couldn’t remember, now, looking back, any time at which it had come to a definitive end. Certainly she had ceased at some point to be aware of it, but by no means could that be considered proof that the sound itself had ceased. 

Oh, _proof_ , she thought, laughing at herself, gently teasing: _proof_ – silly Eleanor, you have already been helping the doctor too long, you and your grand thoughts of _proof_... 

Last night, she thought, the sound grew so very strong and swelled so vastly that I felt swallowed up inside it; subsumed, consumed; last night that sound seemed to consume the world, to _become_ the world... and so perhaps it still _is_ the world; perhaps the only reason I am unable to hear it at this very moment is that I am existing now inside it. Beneath her trailing hand the smooth polished wood of a low table ran coolly, without splinters or dust or friction: Hill House accommodated her politely as she moved through it, thinking of it. Perhaps that sound is my habitat now, my very own living environment; perhaps I have been made unaware of it again because to be aware of it _now_ , awake and in the daylight, alive to that sound in all its true vastness, would be to forfeit my awareness of everything else. Perhaps some things are so vast that you cannot be aware of anything else once you have become aware of them. 

“Nell!” The cry was Theodora’s: she was there, suddenly, when she hadn’t been there before; she was framed in an opened doorway and waving at Eleanor as vigorously as though the pair of them were sisters at last reunited on a train platform after years apart. “Nell – you’re here?” 

“I’m here,” Eleanor said truthfully. 

“We thought you were by the kitchens,” Theodora said. In her hand she held the slender neck of a hideously fluted glass vase. “We thought we saw you slipping by outside along the veranda; we called to you.”

“I’m here,” Eleanor said again. She began to turn up her palms but realized as she did how helpless and silly the gesture would make her seem; instead she pressed her hands awkwardly to her sides, unsure where they should be, and lowered them again. “I’m here. Not somewhere else.” 

“Well, if you’re not averse to _being_ somewhere else, then Theo wants to pick flowers,” Luke said. “You’re invited too, Nellie, so long as you’re willing to brave encountering a nettle or two.”

“ _I_ would brave almost anything for the sake of brightening up this dreadful place,” Theodora said. “You’ll come along with us, Nell, won’t you? You see she will, Luke; I told you she would. Nell is a good girl. Nell is quite distressingly biddable, but we all of us love her for it. Nell is a _very_ good girl; she is my dearest friend,” Theodora announced, and danced away from Luke to fling her arm around Eleanor’s neck and pull her close, cheek to warm cheek, before falling away again to walk beside her, laughing, swinging the empty glass vase in her fingers. 

It was a very ugly vase, but items of beauty did not proliferate within the conditions of Hill House; there was nothing within its walls lovelier than Theodora herself, and of late even she seemed to Eleanor quite shockingly hideous at times. 

+++

“If not a circus, if not a travelling fair, then at the very _least_ a little music,” said Luke, “a little music, merely that; I require no more than a little music with which to disrupt the oppressive dusty silence of this place... Perhaps we could gather at the fireside tonight for a sort of jolly sing-song.”

“I feel rather as if any instrument brought into Hill House would cease to play in the way it should do,” Theodora remarked. “A flute would fill up with dust and only squeak. A violin’s strings would only squeal, no matter what maestro held its bow.” Her hands were pale and moved lightly as she ate and spoke; her nails shone red. If a brick crushed her hands they would not move so lightly and she would be afraid, Eleanor said to herself, watching; Theodora would not be able to say then that she was not afraid, because we would all see it. 

“Eleanor?” said the doctor. He was watching with his head inclined in that alert, thoughtful way of his, and Eleanor realized with a shameful shock that he could have said her name many times already before she heard it now. “You’ve eaten very little, I observe. Are you unwell?”

“No,” Eleanor said, embarrassed to have been seen, “no, I was – thinking. Don’t you think, sometimes, that it seems as if – oh, as if the house wants to _teach_ us? As if it has something it wants us to learn?”

“How to experience seasickness on dry land,” Luke said. 

“Ten different ways to wedge open a door,” Theodora said. 

“To become yourself,” Eleanor said. “All of yourself. I think some people, lots of people – they’re all in pieces. Different parts of them which think different things and their feelings don’t match their own feelings, sometimes; they’re all in little bits, on the inside. But all those little bits are in the same person, so you ought to bring them together; you ought to make them whole, even if they were always apart to begin with. You should be all of yourself at the same time.” As she spoke she cupped her hands together, gently, as if trying to hold a butterfly between them. Inside the cup of my hands should be everything that is Eleanor, she told herself, all of my disparate parts made no longer disparate: all of the things I like and dislike, my memories and my fears, my old lost hopes and my unknown yet-to-be-hoped future hopes, and all of my daydreams from the silliest to the most serious; all of these pieces of me _are_ me, and should not be left apart in pieces. These are pieces of Eleanor and I am Eleanor; I am no one else; these pieces are mine and I should have them all. I should take ownership of myself. I am myself and I deserve to be in my own possession. 

She was warm with distracted pleasure when she raised her head again. Luke was looking at Theodora, expecting Theodora to be looking back at him, but Theodora was leaning her cheek in her hand and looking at Eleanor instead. The doctor was looking at Eleanor as well. She was flustered but she shouldn’t be, she didn’t ought to be, she _wouldn’t_ be: Eleanor was herself, all of herself, and she hadn’t been afraid last night. The sound of the house asserting itself in a frenzy at their bedroom door was ringing out too loud to be heard, so vast that all of them were contained within it: she was not ashamed. 

“I don’t think _I’m_ all in little pieces,” Theodora said lazily. “I feel whole and entire, thank you very much.”

“Because of Hill House,” Luke told her wisely. “You’ve learned that since coming here, Theo; I remember when we first met I said to myself, now, _there’s_ a young lady who’s all in little pieces if ever I’ve seen one. You’ve glued yourself back together nicely since then, under the guidance of Hill House.”

“A house in possession of a flair for dramatics _and_ ceramics,” said Theodora, and sighed in a manner sufficiently excessive to confirm that she too possessed at least one of Hill House’s own notable traits. “It really does seem absurd that a house of this size lacks a piano, you know. Those poor little girls; shut away in here, nothing to while away those long dreary afternoons but daydreams of damnation...”

“I’ll stay with you this afternoon, if you’d like,” the doctor said to Eleanor, speaking quietly across the table. “If you happen to be feeling a little unwell, then some rest and peaceful company might do you good.”

“I’m not unwell,” Eleanor said. “Thank you,” she added, remembering herself – all of herself, all at once. When she put her hands flat against the tabletop it seemed she could almost feel its secret booming pulse, the steady rhythm which shook Hill House as each beat hammered against the door last night and the nights before and now and always: here, here, it is here, only here – see me, here. I am here and you are here: you are with me, here.

+++

The night rolled down the hills and swarmed in dark silence up the valley and drew itself steadily, heavily, across Hill House until its black shape was obscured in blackness; its malevolence was unseen from without and within. After dinner Theodora sat beside Luke and the doctor and spoke to them as they moved chess pieces on the board and Eleanor did not. Eleanor sat in the armchair and folded her hands in her lap and closed her eyes. The sound of the house: it had no sound. It had a sound so cacophonous it could not be heard. With her eyes closed there was no proof that the little parlor existed nor that Theodora and Luke and the doctor existed, nor that Eleanor herself existed; there was only the sound which beat on below it all. 

Here I am, she thought, her eyes closed and her hands folded; here I am, where I should be. Hill House belongs where it is. 

“I do believe Nell has dozed off in all the excitement.” It was Luke’s voice, speaking above her in that drolly self-conscious manner which she supposed he imagined charismatic. “It was a hard-won duel but I’ve battled the good doctor into submission, Nell – so wake up, and look upon the victor standing proud before you. I shall wait as long as I must to receive my laurel crown.”

Of course _he_ should receive a laurel crown, Eleanor thought coolly; of course _he_ feels no doubt that he deserves such a prize and feels no shame in demanding it. Matters would certainly be quite different if it were I to whom victory belonged... But then, she thought, in all my life I have never won anything; out of all the things which I possess and are mine, none are victory. I do not think I regret its absence. 

“Eleanor?” Now the doctor’s voice: he spoke more gently than Luke, and he sounded closer than Luke, so he must have been leaning in toward her. If he leans any closer I will feel his breath, Eleanor thought; it will be warm with whiskey and he will smell like a man. “If she will not wake, I shall have to ask you, Theodora, to attempt stirring her; it would not be seemly for either Luke or myself to attempt the same... Eleanor? Are you sleeping?”

“Oh, she’s only pretending,” Theodora said carelessly. Sweet and lovely Theodora, with her shining lovely hair: she wasn’t speaking to Eleanor, but she was speaking near enough and clearly enough that her words could only be meant for Eleanor all the same. “She likes to have all of us fussing over her, so she pretends, and enjoys the attention...”

 _You_ aren’t fussing over me, Eleanor thought, and opened her eyes. “I’m going to bed,” she said, rising to her feet. The others stepped back in surprise to let her through and she moved between them. 

Out the door, which swung shut behind her; along the hall and through the next room and into the entrance hall and up the staircase as it swept around with one step and then the next, leading forwards and up in the way that a staircase should do; she went along the upstairs hall and came to her room and went inside it. A house could hardly be called sick when it was serving every function that a house should serve. It was not a symptom of disease to be precisely and unapologetically what one was: a house, or otherwise. 

+++

“You know I was only teasing,” Theodora said, coming from their connecting bathroom in her nightgown which was Eleanor’s nightgown, because Theodora’s own pale pretty nightgown had been spoiled redly, messily, and Theodora had wept and raged and shrieked when she had learned it was all spoiled; she had been afraid, and in her fear she was hateful; hateful and Theodora, also – she was always Theodora, afraid or hateful or neither or both. 

Fear makes her inadequate, Eleanor said wisely to herself. Or is it unfair of me to think that? But then, isn’t it true?— _is_ it unfair, to think something which is true? Can it ever be unfair, for your own private thoughts to be true...? 

Theodora was moving now into the warm circle of lamplight and Eleanor watched her, and wondered clearly, If I knew certainly that I had been unfair to her, would it matter to me? Would I care? 

“ _I_ was unfair to you by saying it, of course,” Theodora told her. “But I was only trying to provoke you, Nellie, you understand. You know how it is, once you’ve already made a good start on dozing off – ever so comfortable, ready to sleep; nothing can ever properly rouse a person from a state like that without enraging them; so I thought it would be more efficient simply to enrage you right away.”

“I’m tired,” Eleanor said. “I’m tired and going to bed.”

“Are you angry with me?” Theodora asked. She sounds almost timid, Eleanor thought – but she’s curious, too; I really do think she’s curious. Theodora doesn’t want me to be angry but perhaps she wonders what my anger might be like; perhaps she doubts whether I am in possession of such an emotion. “You’re odd, Nell, you know that. You might be the oddest person I’ve ever met. Sometimes you’re so perfectly transparent that I almost hate having to look at you – having to turn my head and look at you, knowing that as soon as I do I’m going to see every thought in your head as clear as day; as though you’ve left in plain sight all the private things that everyone else knows instinctively to hide away... As though you’ve stepped out into the world without ever realizing you’ve forgotten to dress yourself. As though no one ever taught you people are supposed to dress themselves at all.” 

An obscure shame moved within Eleanor, and she turned away to hide it, to arrange more neatly her few hairpins on the table at her bedside. 

“And then at other times I find myself wondering if you really _are_ as transparent as all that,” Theodora went on; she was in bed now, pulling at her sheets to move them to her liking, shoving one shoulder comfortably against her pillows as she spoke, “because I can’t imagine why you’d ever think some of the things it seems to me you think. Sometimes I can’t imagine even _you_ understand why you think some of the things you do; I imagine you must think without really knowing why you’re thinking at all.” 

I am here, Eleanor said to herself; I am here, in the daytime and the night-time I am Eleanor and I am myself. I am tired and I am going to sleep and while I sleep I shall continue to remain myself: I do this every night. 

“I’ve never felt that I understood anyone as completely as I do you, dear Nell; and I’ve never felt that I understood anyone as little as I do you, either. You’re the least complicated and most incomprehensible person in the world.”

“If all of this is your way of asking for my thoughts, it would be far more civil to ask directly,” Eleanor said with stiff formality, “but I shall tell you anyway: I am thinking of Hill House.” She reached out for the lamp and with her touch made the whole room dark. “I’m very tired. I’m going to sleep. Good night, Theo.” 

“Good luck getting to sleep with _this_ happiest of happy homes on your mind,” Theodora said, or perhaps she said, or perhaps she didn’t say at all: Eleanor told herself that if Theodora spoke then she did not hear it. She chose not to hear it. She was lying in silence and the darkness and listening to the sounds of the house; she was tired and she was going to sleep.

+++

“Nell – oh, Nellie, Nell—” 

Something moved, and touched her: a pressure weighed on Eleanor’s side through her sheets and quilt – it was Theodora’s hand, reaching for her, pressing on her through the covers: Eleanor knew it without thinking, without waking; and in the darkness was a sound which went pitter-patter, pitter-patter, a light soft rhythm like rain or like stones from overhead, stones on the roof – pitter-patter; the room was dark and in its darkness Theodora was darker, leaning over Eleanor’s body as she lay still and gazed up in to the darkness which was all around her. She was awake now. 

“Nell,” Theodora said to her again; her voice was softened too, for the sake of the darkness, but pressured and full of fear, “Nell, do you hear it? Are you awake?”

I am not awake, Eleanor told herself, I am asleep and I will stay asleep, for attention, because Theodora knows all about the things which people do in order to receive attention; I will lie here quietly and calmly and she may cry and be afraid alone tonight. “I am awake,” Eleanor said. “What do you hear?”

“That sound,” Theodora said, “that tapping – tap-tap-tapping at our chamber door, oh, Nell, this _awful_ house! I wish I’d never come. I wish I’d stayed at home. I wish the doctor’s letter had been lost in the post and never reached me, and that way I should never have had to learn of even so much as the fact of this place’s existence; I should never have had to learn that I must share my world with Hill House.” 

The tap-tap-tapping was a gentle sound, and it didn’t seem that any ghostly hand was causing it so much as it seemed that the sound existed in and of itself, merely a feature of the space around them; there was tapping that might have been from the door, and from within their connecting bathroom, and at their window it seemed that it might only be the sound of a soft and pleasant nighttime rainfall. It is not _your_ world, Eleanor thought unkindly; it is not _your_ world to share... “But it would exist anyway,” she said to Theodora. “Whether we knew of it or not, Hill House would always continue to be here, existing.”

“And I suppose that’s rather a dreadful thought in its own way, isn’t it?—Hill House existing, and our not knowing it... Better for a child to _know_ there’s a monster in her closet, so that she can go to sleep with a baseball bat cradled in her arms, than for her to learn of the monster only when it bursts out from her closet all ready to eat her up.”

They were both quiet, and listening. Against the walls, the floor, the ceiling: pitter-patter, pitter-patter, a sound so small and calm and continuous that it seemed almost loving; it was loving in its gentle thoroughness, in its diligent, attentive focus... 

Eleanor stirred, her eyes closed. “You mustn’t take a baseball bat to the house, Theo.”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Theodora said airily in the darkness, “however much I wanted to, I couldn’t. I hadn’t the foresight to bring a bat with me, you see; I didn’t anticipate how fiercely I would find my appetite for property destruction whetted by a week’s internment within Hill House. ...But do you know, Nell?—it seems to me that Hill House would have found a way into my life no matter what I did. We were destined to be together, Hill House and I. Perhaps I would have taken a familiar turning one day and there it would have been, where it never was before, and I, never having received the doctor’s letter, would have been none the wiser as to what I saw and would have crashed my car, or perhaps simply braked right there in the middle of the street and thrown open the door to vomit. That _sound_ ,” she went on suddenly, with loathing, “like – oh, like _fingers_ , don’t you think? The fingers of a child. A skeleton. The skeleton of a child. Tap-tap-tap: such a _thin_ little noise...”

“What an imagination you have,” said Eleanor, thinking to herself that it was quite unfair that within their group it was _she_ who had been given the role of the dreamer, the one whose fears and fancies ran away with her, when it would have been quite the other way around if only the men could have heard the way Theodora spoke at such times as this, the absurd horrors Theodora felt it necessary to invent in order to explain away the pitter-patter at the boundaries of their room: around and below and above, tapping everywhere, here are the limits of your room and I am testing them, and they are sound; they hold up strongly, and well... “Perhaps afterwards everything will seem changed,” Eleanor said. She heard and felt Theodora moving as she spoke, slipping in a hurry from her own bed into Eleanor’s; the mattress gave as Theodora put her knee upon it. “All your most familiar things will become different, when you see them again for the first time afterwards. You’ll have seen them all before but you’ll never have seen them with the knowledge of Hill House, and that will make them different.”

“I intend to forget this place existed the moment I set foot outside its gates,” Theodora said, much closer now. “Move over, Nell, let me in beside you.” 

In the darkness she seemed to enter Eleanor’s bed in fragments: first her voice, and then Eleanor felt the movements of her sheets and knew it was Theodora who moved them; then her legs were below the sheets with Eleanor’s legs, slipping and pushing around as she found the patch of heat which Eleanor’s body had made for Eleanor and was now being taken away from her by Theodora; and then her hair, which swung across Eleanor’s face and neck as Theodora laid herself down beside her; and then lastly her breath, which came burningly from her mouth in their cold dark room: and then all of Theodora lay with Eleanor in Eleanor’s bed and her head on Eleanor’s pillow, and she turned her face towards Eleanor’s in the darkness. 

“Think of afterwards,” Theodora said. When she spoke Eleanor felt her breath and was burned by it, again and again. “That _noise_ —! Quickly, Nell, think of afterwards. Let’s make it a game. In the morning this will be over, and then...?”

“In the morning you will pretend it didn’t scare you,” Eleanor said. “And you will pretend you came into my bed to comfort _me_ , and you will tell Luke that you came into my bed and you will say it with that way you have, that – _way_ , where everything is a little bit bad and little bit daring so it seems like everything is a joke, because it is all a joke to _you_ , so it must be a joke to everyone else as well. And—”

“Why, you’re already jealous of attention which you _imagine_ I’m going to get.” Theodora’s voice came out hotly too: as soft and quiet as her breath, as close to Eleanor’s cheek. Pitter-pattering everywhere, all around them, a rhythm which was quickening like the tapping of anxious fingers on a tabletop, someone very worried and seeking calm: the room is safe, safe, solid and sound and safe. “Is this what you do at night, Nell? Lie here and imagine all the ways I might do things to steal your spotlight? Feeling sorry for yourself, and stirring yourself up about me, so you’re able to start your day feeling already grievously wronged by me as soon as sunrise comes?”

“ _I’m_ not afraid,” Eleanor said. “You are afraid even to say you are afraid, but I am not afraid.”

“Not afraid! Why, you’re the scarediest scaredy-cat Hill House has ever known. All of us know it; you _know_ that all of us know it, Nell; we are only too kind to tell you,” Theodora added, and her fingertip touched Eleanor’s cheek with sly gentle spitefulness. 

But I have changed, Eleanor wanted to say; I have understood what I didn’t understand back then, at first. I can see now what a joke it is, and how silly it is to be scared by a place of belonging and reassurance. A house is only a house and it only wants to be a house; we should allow it that much. Who are we not to allow it that much? Let it be what it is, and what it wants. 

Eleanor moved restlessly, and said, “I am here.”

“What? You are where? I know you’re here, I can feel you taking up all the sheets. You are warm, at least; I don’t entirely regret coming into your bed when you are as warm as this.” Theodora’s movements felt luxurious; when she stretched it seemed that she stretched with the righteousness of being in her own bed, and when she wiggled her toes it seemed that it was her own bed she was wiggling them in; when she put her cold foot against Eleanor’s leg it seemed that it was Eleanor who had become the intruder, and should leave her bed to allow Theodora to have it, because it belonged to Theodora now. “J is for jealous,” Theodora said to her, whispering. “E is for extraordinarily jealous, and E is also for Eleanor. Now, isn’t that a coincidence?” 

“You shouldn’t keep things for yourself,” Eleanor said. “That isn’t right. You should share.”

“What exactly do you think I’m keeping for myself, dearest Nell?”

Attention, Eleanor thought – but that isn’t right, she thought again at once, no, it isn’t attention; I don’t care about attention, I don’t _want_ attention. Or at least, certainly, I don’t want _not_ to be given attention but I don’t want to have all of it, either; I want to be seen and acknowledged – yes: to be acknowledged; I think that would be enough. I would be satisfied, if I could only be acknowledged. I would become content, if I could know that I had been and was yet acknowledged. 

“Yourself,” Eleanor said at last. “That’s the most selfish thing of all, I think. You keep all of yourself for yourself and won’t share you or anything of you with anyone else, because you only want you, and only want you to have you... I’m _not_ jealous,” she said strongly, “and I’m not afraid, but it isn’t right not to share.”

“No, of course not,” Theodora agreed; she was readily and mockingly polite. “And you don’t ask much, do you, Nell? The hurdles one must jump in order not to be held in your irredeemable disregard as _selfish_ – one must only give all of oneself, and hold nothing back. _You’ve_ done it, after all, so why shouldn’t all the rest of us? _You’ve_ given all of yourself up, again and again, and _you’ve_ received nothing in return for yourself and _you_ have nothing left of yourself to show for it – so why shouldn’t all the rest of us be just as willing as _you_?—to sacrifice ourselves, for nothing but the pleasure of our own meek self-righteousness?”

Theodora spoke, and her breath scorched out: Eleanor’s cheek was made hot by each burning word. There is nothing meek about _her_ self-righteousness, Eleanor told herself. I am here, Eleanor told herself too; I am here, and nowhere else. 

“But you’re hardly here, either,” Theodora said to her. “You’re hardly anyone at all,” she went on, speaking viciously and with tenderness in the dark, in the night, in the warm comforts of Eleanor’s own bed, “not anymore, you’re all gone, all used up; you gave yourself away and were too timid to ask if you might please have yourself returned. It seems almost impossible to believe we ever felt we must be cousins.”

“And yet we are,” Eleanor said. 

“And yet we are,” Theodora agreed. “So very alike, you and I. Two peas in a pod. Two peas rattling around together in a great hulking diseased shell of a pod, this mindless abomination of a pod, this—oh, tap-tap-tap,” spoken with abrupt and fearful scorn, “tap-tap-tap, will it _never_ end?”

“It only wants us to listen to it.”

“And perhaps if I were less barbarically selfish, and could find it in myself to spare a little kindness for poor Hill House and only lend it my listening ear, then it might cleanse itself of all its sickness and become—oh! _quite_ lovely? Is that what you mean to say, Nell?”

“I said that it only wants us to listen to it,” Eleanor said stubbornly; she was speaking up toward the ceiling of her bedroom, which was the blue room of Hill House, although now in the deep night her blue room was not blue and was only dark; it could not even be said to be black, for it was too dark for blackness; it was beyond all color now and had become only dark. “That is what I said. I didn’t say anything else.”

Movement in the bed, warm intimate movement in the softness of the blankets; it was not Eleanor’s movement so must have been Theodora’s. The sheets moved and were still again: Theodora settled once more. “I _am_ a little afraid,” she said, in a way which was private, and conversational, as though they really were two schoolgirl cousins whispering their secrets alone together in the darkness, “afraid for me or for you or of you, I’m not sure just yet; I’m afraid because I feel you will bring Hill House home with you, no matter which home you go to. No one can behave with so much more tender consideration toward the needs of a house than the needs of her very own cousin and _not_ have a sliver of that house lodged inside her. Hill House has worked a splinter of its hideous old wainscoting into your heart, and now you’ll take it with you everywhere you go: that is what I believe.”

“You may believe what you like,” said Eleanor. 

“Yes, I may,” Theodora said emphatically. “I may believe what I like and I may say what I like and I may do what I like. Unlike _you_ , of whom so little remains that I suspect you hardly know any longer what it is you like and dislike. What you want, and what you don’t.”

Eleanor was quiet. Theodora waited for her not to be quiet and to speak but Eleanor was quiet; she stayed quiet. The desperate seeking pitter-pattering against the walls and floor and ceiling and curtained glass of the window rushed on, and Eleanor was quiet. 

“Do you _remember_ how to want, Nell? For no other reason than that you want? Wanting, for wanting’s sake?” What had begun as mockery was changed already, and now Theodora spoke more slowly, and seemed hesitant; her questions were softened in a way which was childlike in its tentative sincerity. “Do you remember how to want – for any reason other than that you believe someone else _wants_ you to want?”

I am here, Eleanor said to herself urgently; I am in the darkness and cannot see myself but I am here, I am only here. Only I am here. 

“Well, you’ll remember when we’re out of here again,” Theodora told her, more kindly; she found Eleanor’s cold hand beneath their sheets and patted it, then held it in her own. “It’ll all come flooding back to you. And if you really never did learn before then you’ll have all the time in the world to learn afterwards. You can practice wanting little things – a nice soft egg on toast for your breakfast, perhaps – and work up to wanting medium things, such as a new radio, or a particular occupation at work; and once you have experience you can begin to practice wanting much larger and more significant things, which might include—”

It was easy for Eleanor to kiss her: she had only to raise one hand to the place in the darkness where Theodora’s voice was burning, and then follow her hand with her mouth and press her lips there, against Theodora’s lips, and then it was done – Eleanor had kissed her, and it was over; it was her first kiss, and now it was done. 

“Oh!—two peas in a nasty little pod,” said Theodora, her voice breathless with laughter and surprise in the darkness, “ _didn’t_ I say that, Nell? Isn’t that what I told you? I hope you realize you are only proving my point here,” and then at once she kissed Eleanor back, and it was easier this time, because Eleanor, by kissing Theodora first, had shown Theodora the way; it was easier in the darkness for Theodora to find the place where Eleanor should be kissed because Eleanor had already brought her there herself. 

The closeness of another person was shocking. If Eleanor hadn’t become so recently and concretely aware of what of her was hers and what was not then it might have been overwhelming, she thought, with her eyes squeezed closed and Theodora’s hand on her, on different parts of her, moving on her so that Theodora could learn for herself what parts of Eleanor constituted Eleanor; if Eleanor hadn’t recently come to know herself so well then she might have had to push Theodora away from her again, unable to endure her closeness and the warm silent confidence of the way she moved and touched her... But I _do_ know myself; I have come to know myself well, I am closer and more familiar with myself than ever, Eleanor said to herself in silly jubilation, and I know that some feelings are so vast that you cannot be aware of them at all times because when you _are_ aware of them then they overwhelm you; I know where I am, and where I am not. I know who I am and who I am not. I am kissing Theodora and Theodora is kissing me and tonight we will be kind to each other and in the morning we will be each other’s dearest friends again; we will laugh and be joyful at the breakfast table, we will race barefoot across the soft dewy lawns and tumble breathlessly clutching each other to the grass; we will be giddy, like children; we will find our happiness together again in Hill House, the same way that we found each other in Hill House to begin with. We are each other’s happiness and we have found each other now. 

“Hush,” Theodora said to her, “don’t speak, Nellie, you’ll only ruin it,” and she kissed Eleanor’s mouth to stop her, although Eleanor hadn’t known she wanted to speak until Theodora told her not to. 

All of the different things she wouldn’t say came to her at once then, rushing and growing, and when her mouth was hers again she opened it and said, “It is quieter now.”

“What is? Didn’t I say not to speak? Hush, hush, let me—”

“The noise,” Eleanor said. “The tapping. It’s softer now... I think it’s calmer. Perhaps the house has tired itself out for tonight.”

“There _is_ no tapping,” Theodora said. “It went quiet forever ago, Nell; didn’t you notice? Do you really think I could concentrate properly on kissing you if we still had Hill House knocking at our door? Do you think I would do... _this_... if I knew we still had an audience?”

But I can hear it, Eleanor wanted to say – and then, But _can_ I hear it? Is that what I hear...? The sound seemed even softer now; it was perhaps on the edge of hearing or perhaps not within hearing at all; perhaps it was a sound within her mind, or her memory, or in her preoccupation with Theodora she had failed to notice the silence and only assumed that the tapping still continued... “But the door itself belongs to Hill House,” Eleanor said at last, troubled. “So that wasn’t what it was doing. It can’t have been knocking. The door belongs to the house, so the house wouldn’t need to knock; it isn’t necessary to request what already belongs to you.”

“Oh, _Nell_ ,” said Theodora, and sighed sweetly and with resignation; in the darkness and utter stillness of their bedroom there was no other sound. Her hand moved against Eleanor’s hair. “This is why I asked you not to talk,” Theodora said to her sincerely, “because you open your mouth and say things like that, and I have to work so very hard to continue pretending that you didn’t and keep loving you.”

“Loving me?”

“If you promise not to talk about Hill House every time I stop kissing you, then of course; _you_ know that. You know how I love you.”

“ _You_ are the one talking about Hill House, anyway,” Eleanor said; nothing was tapping and nothing was hammering and the house was silent but it could not be silent; its silence was concealing a truth which would have overwhelmed them. The illusion of silence is an act of mercy, Eleanor thought; Hill House is allowing me not to perceive it fully. Theodora loves me, she loves me; I knew that she loved me; we both have known ever since we met that we love each other, and tomorrow we will love each other still. “ _You_ are the one who—”

“At this rate it would save us more time simply not to stop kissing you,” said Theodora, and resumed kissing her. 

“In the morning,” Eleanor began, when she had a chance—

“It is the night; don’t worry about the morning.”

“But tomorrow we shall—”

“Tonight is still tonight, so let’s enjoy it while we have it.”

“We shall be happy tomorrow,” Eleanor said. It wasn’t at all enough for what she really wanted to express, but she was oddly satisfied by it anyway, and she told herself again: we _shall_ be happy tomorrow. 

“Not if you don’t allow me to make both of us happy tonight,” Theodora said. “Like so, Nell – have you done this before? Oh, but of course you have; you are a courtesan, you are a muse to poets, you are the delight of the cafés... Let me show you anyway.”

“Theo – Theo, I have been thinking,” Eleanor said later, stirring and speaking with urgency, “and I think that the only part of Hill House which has grown lodged inside my heart is _you_ , Theo.”

“I am not a part of Hill House,” said Theodora, “and I _wish_ you would stop talking about—”

“You’ll always be with me,” Eleanor said to her, “and I’ll always be with you; we can take each other with us wherever we go. We have found our happiness and we shall keep it now.” Oh, _what_ am I saying? she thought with despair, and then laughed to herself, secretly; she was a little embarrassed by herself but she was too filled with her happiness to care. Perhaps happiness is always a little embarrassing – _I_ wouldn’t know; I have experienced happiness so rarely in my life that I have no way of knowing what is or is not typical. “Tomorrow I shall hold your hand in the hallways of Hill House,” Eleanor said proudly, and then laughed aloud at her own absurdity, at the giddy swell of her own ridiculous happiness. “Tomorrow—”

“You’re overexcited,” Theodora said, shushing her, “you’re all worked up, Nell; you’re like a child the night before her birthday... You really ought to go to sleep, or you’ll fall asleep face-first in your cake tomorrow with all your classmates looking on.”

“Oh, I never had a party,” Eleanor said gaily, “in all my life I have never had a party; I have never been celebrated. Tomorrow we shall—”

“We shall see about tomorrow.”

“We shall be happy tomorrow.”

“We shall see about tomorrow,” Theodora said again, more sternly, and Eleanor acquiesced meekly and consented to lie still, pretending sleep, because she knew that certain sorts of feelings existed which, once awoken to, could never be put away or set aside or made unknown again: they would be happy tomorrow. They would be happy ever after. Here or anywhere else they would be happy – no: _here_ , Eleanor corrected herself swiftly; wherever I am I will be here, and with Theodora, and happy. All of the future has changed now. Hill House has shaped my life with joy, and I am grateful; I am more grateful for this than I have ever been for anything else. I have never been dealt such a kindness in my life as I have been dealt by each perfect day I have spent within Hill House... Tomorrow, Eleanor said to herself, excitement rising high inside her, _tomorrow_...

In the darkness they were quiet. They breathed, and were still, and were warm together and would be happy together always, now: I am certain of it, Eleanor told herself happily. She lay awake with Theodora’s knee pushing into her side, and Theodora’s arm heavy and warm across her middle, and she looked up into the darkness of the unseen ceiling and listened to the sounds of the house. 

At last she said, “Theo...?” 

“Hush,” Theodora said drowsily, and stroked her fingers along the edge of Eleanor’s nightgown collar. “Hush, let me sleep; I am trying to dream sweet dreams.”

“Do you hear that?”

“I hear nothing but you, dear Nell.”

Eleanor lay still and listened to the sounds of the house. Like a stick being dragged against park railings, or a cane being rapped smartly against the walls to test their soundness, checking for cavities and hollow places... But the sounds were not at their own room: they came from further down the hall, moving steadily and made quieter by their distance. 

“Do _you_ hear something?” Theodora asked in sleepy curiosity. 

Theodora is pretending not to hear it, Eleanor thought with relief, so that I will not be worried and will sleep; she is being kind. She is being kind because she loves me. 

“Nothing,” Eleanor said in gratitude. “Nothing but me. Nothing but you. Only us, and Hill House. Tomorrow we _shall_ be happy.”

**Author's Note:**

> To AO3 user shinealightonme: I love this novel, and I was delighted when I got your prompts and found out we shared all the same feelings about the awful, turbulent tenderness of Eleanor and Theo's relationship. Thank you for the chance to write this, and I hope you have a very merry Yuletide!


End file.
